Earned $2,672 in a week on CJ.com...it was an advertiser's mistake.

I earned about 3 grand in a week on CJ.com through Dada.net's trial program which paid $16.00 per signup. The payment never went through and the advertiser de-activated me and now I finally get an email explaining why.

This letter is to inform you that Dada Entertainment suffered a reporting and tracking error for the period from May 15, 2009 through June 17, 2009, which artificially inflated the acquisition statistics initially reported to you for that period.

During this time period Dada was soliciting users for two distinct offers:

(1) A Seven Day Trial which offered 25 free mp3?s to which a user could subscribe by providing his/her credit card information.

(2) A ?3 Free? Promotion which offered 3 free mp3?s for which a user could sign up by providing a valid email address.

The tracking error caused the reported number of subscriptions for the Seven Day Trial to be inflated by the inclusion of the number of signups for the ?3 Free? Promotion. The Seven Day Trial carries a sixteen (16) dollar cost per acquisition whereas the ?3 Free? Promotion carries a one (1) dollar cost per acquisition, thus creating an inaccurate accounting for the period of May 15 through June 17.

In order to address this issue and correct any inaccurate accounting statements, we have included corrected figures for May 15 through June 17 as follows:

Publisher?s Corrected Commission: $ 358.00

We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused. If you have questions regarding this matter, please feel free to contact myself or Tanya Bridges.

Click to expand...

Is there any way that I can fight this and say I put time and money into promoting the offer because it was doing so well for me, and that it's not MY fault they had tracking problems? Or do I just have to suck it up and take the $358.

If the money REALLY means something to you, then I think you definitely have a legit cause for your argument. If its not that big of a deal and you are trying to stay under the radar using BH methods it might just be safer to let it go.

Because of this, I would fight it. I can see them trying to mitigate their losses for their bad coding (after all, they won't want to eat it any more than you do), but that's no reason to deactivate you.

Unless, like tywebb said, you were using some kind of BH methods; then you should keep your head down. They will certainly put a proctoscope up your sites when you try to get a few more $K out of them. So if they'd find anything bad, best to not get them looking too hard!

I'd send a polite, receipt requested email to them saying something like, "I find this unacceptable but understandable. I hope that no future "errors" cause me to have to spend $1k on traffic for an offer that has been poorly planned and tracked. I considered legal options but realize that mistakes happen on everyone's part and will take the loss as a reinforcement of my belief that Commission Junction is a reasonable partner and does their best to earn their percentage of my profits for playing intermediary in avoiding such situations.

Unfortunately, business sense dictates that this will be the last time that such miscalculations will be acceptable to our organization and we will be carefully monitoring all activity with the network in future and will pursue legal action for any further commission interruptions for any reason whatsoever."

Then I'd cookies stuff the bejesus out of them.

And if they bitch, send a copy of this email to their compliance person and openly copy my lawyer <cough>.

You are the 1 in a thousand that have read those terms. Probably including the account reps.

I'll just toss out a couple of sites here that might bring some light to the discussion:

Code:

bbb.org
ripoffreport.com
scambusters.org
ehf-b-eyedotgove [yeah, I double secret encoded that one just in case]

between those sites there is a tremendous amount of leverage against a company like CJ.

If they start showing up in the SERPS for terms near the sites I just mentioned they can be seriously harmed.

So in spite of TOS we aren't powerless and they know it.

A#2 or #3 listing in a search engine that says "CJ is a scam" can cost them millions or tens of millions. If you aren't doing black-hole-hat (e.g. pure fraud) they will be cautious with you to some extent because they know that a motivated blackhat could have "<company name>scam" show up in the serps for several months.

At least I hope you know this, stupid companies.

So if you have any legal leg to stand on, and they have any common sense, they'll pay what you're owed, ban you from the offer or network, and move on.

So the "rest of the money" is negotiable depending on how far you're willing to take it, how badly they're screwing you etc.

See?

None of this is carved in stone, but keep in mind that even huge companies have buttons you can push to make them do what you want.

I would send a direct letter to Dada Entertainment via snail mail threatening legal action for not fulfilling their end of an agreement.
Make it polite but firm.
Don't get too emotional.
You will might find they settle you up on the quiet.
Let us know how ya go.

haha they called your bluff or are willing to meet an agreement. Don't be suprised if they contact AdEngage to confirm the Invoice number. You are walking in different territory if you are willing to send a fake invoice in hope of receiving some cash. Be careful!

Hi, I would not send that "invoice" if it is indeed fake. Fraud is slightly different then sending traffic from cloaked websites.

This would be way to easy for CJ / Account manager to follow up and although I realize that as blackhatters we "push the envelope" somewhat, this would not be flying under the radar, it would be the equivalent of flying a stealth bomber straight into the radar.

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